> I wasn't really thinking of output or productivity, but the maintenance
> of the state. ...with the fewest complications and
impediments--efficiently.
Alexandre Matheron more or less concurs, after a discussion on Hobbes quest to resolve the 'inadequacies' of the contract through a shift to an apologia of the contract (or rather, the transfer of rights to the sovereign), in practice, without reserve -- in other words, Hobbes - absolutism; Spinoza - antiabsolutism.
Matheron gives this example of Hobbes' discussion of sovereignty and the taking of life as an illustration: "Hobbes will specify in chapter 6, section 13, that we are obligated to obey the sovereign in all matters... On the one hand, then, we have the right to resist the sovereign if he wants to kill us or if he orders us to commit suicide. We have agreed to give him the means to kill others but not to kill ourselves or to let us kill, for every agreement of this kind is automatically void and cannot be included within the social contract. And, on the other hand, in a much more general way, we can conceive if an infinity of cases in which our disobedience would not take away from the sovereign any powers with which the social contract obligates us to furnish him. For example, Hobbes says, if the sovereign has condemned my father to death, and if he orders me to execute him, I have the right to refuse, for he will find specialised professionals to do this work anyway. I have agreed to give the sovereign the means to execute all those condemned to death, eventually including my father, but I have acquitted myself of all obligations on this point by paying my taxes -- thanks to which the sovereign can recruit his executioners." Heh.
I guess that would suggest the removal of impediments to sovereign power that you mentioned, Eric?
There are a few other interesting differences b/n Hobbes and Spinoza: their differing responses to the Cartesian cogito, the mind-body distinction -- these being for me the more interesting or decisive differences perhaps. Emiliana Giancotti argues that Hobbes, unlike Spinoza, "preserves intact, such as he receives it from the theologico-political tradition, the concept of God as a person, all-powerful, creator of the world and separate from the world, object of cult and worship, father and sovereign to whom one owes obedience. ... [A] theory of absolutism ... that Hobbes indicated as the only form of organisation capable of confronting the threats of revolution and of ensuring the conditions necessary for the preservation of life and the free activity of a mercantile economy. The last page of Leviathan seems to justify these two responses." That being the position of someone who simultaneously sought to justify Cromwell's rule and keep drawing a pension from King Charles. Spinoza, otoh, being denounced as a heretic for having the audacity to insist that God is not a person, but that humans arrive at an idea of God as a person; that there is no purpose to the divine; that no one has a monopoly on 'divine speech'; et cetera.
But I suspect an additional stake here -- other than that of Spinoza's rejection of the cogito (epistemological reign) -- that would explain the preference for Hobbes in light of recent discussions on freedom of speech. So, a citation from Spinoza:
"Whoever seeks to regulate everything by laws irritates men's vices rather than correcting them. What cannot be prohibited must necessarily be permitted, even if harm often results from it ... But let it be granted that freedom may be suppressed and that men may become so subservient that they dare not utter a word except on the bidding of the sovereign; nevertheless, they will never be made to think as the sovereign wants, and so as a necessary consequence meant would everyday think one thing and say another; the good faith that is necessary to government will thus be corrupted ... Men as they are generally constituted resent more than anything else the labelling of the opinions that they believe to be true as criminal and the branding of wicked that which inspires them to feel piety toward God and man. This leads them to detest the laws and to conspire against the authorities and judge it not shameful but the highest honour to plot sedition in the name of such a cause, and to attempt any act of violence. Given that such is human nature, it is obvious that laws concerning opinions do not threaten criminals but independent thinkers ... and cannot thus be maintained without the greatest danger to the state."
Balibar notes, "Hobbes ... maintained the contrary: that men can believe whatever they want provided they move their lips in the same movement as the sovereign ... Spinoza does not attack this from a moral standpoint. He shows that it is dangerous because it is physically impossible."
Despite Zizek's criticisms of Spinozian singularities (and Deleuze by extension), Zizek takes a similar position to Spinoza on the cynical distinction between private and public speech, as Marx takes a similar position to Spinoza (and Lacan?) in arguing that censorship incites sedition (or transgression as it does for Lacan? -- which is quite another thing perhaps).
Angela _________